MSTPublications: January & February 2017

Recently, we have had two Vanderbilt MSTP students publish first author manuscripts. An additional twelve MSTP students were co-authors or published a review article. Congratulations to all of our MSTP students on their successful publications in recent months! Take a look at the great work our students are doing.

Achieving permanent organ graft tolerance in the absence of ongoing immune suppression remains the holy grail of transplant immunology. In this article, my lab and I found that transplant tolerance begins at the level of the Hematopoietic Stem Cell (HSC), a cell population whose mobilization during tolerogenic reprogramming required the presence of an intact sympathetic nervous system. Disruption of either HSC compartment or the sympathetic nervous system resulted in failure of graft tolerance to transplants. (by Blair Stocks, M3)

Research concerning exposure to over-the-counter medications during pregnancy often depends on maternal recall for assigning exposure status. The Right From the Start pregnancy cohort assessed NSAID use in early pregnancy through both prospective daily diaries and maternal recall at the end of the first trimester. If data collected in the daily diaries represents true medication use, relying on maternal recall would lead to exposure misclassification for over 25% of the study population. This suggests that the ability to effectively study the impact of drugs taken on an “as needed” basis during pregnancy may be jeopardized by relying on maternal recall and, therefore, prospective data collection methods should be prioritized. (by Alex Sundermann G2)